This Is Not a Panic Attack
by kylermalloy
Summary: Newly turned into a werewolf, Stiles struggles to find control through his memories—and what's happening right in front of him. Canon divergent AU in which Stiles turns into a werewolf to defeat the nogitsune. The fox might be gone, but now Stiles is a wolf. And it might be harder than he thought.


**Written for Stydia Secret Santa 2018. Merry Christmas!**

* * *

Stiles took a deep breath. Closed his eyes. Being calm was never something he'd been very good at. _Find a memory. A good memory._

He had plenty, but they weren't his strongest ones.

 _The pain was too much. It made him too heavy. Each step he took dragged his feet along the ground, like his shoes weighed a thousand pounds each. When he sat at his desk, it was too much work to keep his head up. He buried his face in his forearms and tried not to think._

 _It was probably the stillest he'd ever been in school._

 _He could hear voices surrounding him, feel hands touching, tapping him. Was that his name? Who was calling his name? He didn't care._

 _Just leave me alone, he thought._

 _One voice cut through the rest. Higher. Sharper. "Leave him alone."_

 _The babble surrounding him quieted._

 _"Just get away from him. Can't you see he wants to be left alone?"_

 _Stiles lifted his head the tiniest bit, peeking over his folded arms to see who had come to defend him._

 _The waves of golden reddish hair, the pert, attentive posture gave it away._

 _"When my grandmother died," Lydia Martin continued—speaking to the group of gathered third graders at large, but glancing back to meet Stiles's eyes—"I wanted to be left alone too. Grief is a hard process."_

 _As the crowd began to dissipate, Stiles felt warmth flood through his body, lifting the crushing weight of sadness from his limbs._

 _Just those few sentences. That's all it took._

"Stiles? Stiles, focus."

Hearing his name in the present snapped him out of his memories. As he blinked, shook his head, he realized that fangs had sprouted in his mouth without his permission.

"Crap," he mumbled through a mouthful of sharp, oversized teeth.

"It's not that big a deal. Get over yourself," that same high, sharp voice teased him.

"I— _can't,_ " Stiles growled through gritted teeth. A convulsion rippled through his body, and he felt claws tear through his fingernails like tissue paper.

 _He could barely remember how it happened. One day he'd been losing sleep, discovering a coded kill message in his handwriting, going to see Scott's mom at the hospital—_

 _Then he'd woken up surrounded by his friends, with Lydia Martin clinging to his hand. A bandage was covering his shoulder, dressing the wound Scott had made with his teeth._

 _He'd lost so much time, he soon learned. It had been only a few days after Halloween—now suddenly November was almost over, and Stiles was a werewolf. A slave to the lunar cycle._

 _The next few weeks leading up to the December full moon had been a blur of anxiety, panic attacks punctuated by claws, and Zen lessons with Scott._

 _Now it was here, and Stiles hadn't even had time to get excited about Christmas yet._

"Look at me, Stiles. You can do this." Lydia Martin held his gaze, earnest and trusting. She knelt opposite him on the floor, tilting her head to meet his eyes. "You have to find your anchor."

 _Find your anchor._ Every calming thought he'd run though his mind had failed, every memory with his dad or Scott or...or his mom. Nothing was working like that memory of Lydia.

"I'm trying, but..." He trailed off, clenching his teeth as another spasm wracked his body.

Scott had never mentioned how freaking _painful_ turning into a wolf was. His body strained against it, against the primal urge to use his new teeth, sink them into the prey, sitting compliant right in front of him...

 _No._

He delved back into memories. Searched for more of _her._

 _I can't hurt her. I can't._

 _"Dad, I think I'm in love."_

 _"Really!" His dad, a little less gray-haired, face with fewer lines, lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "With who?"_

 _"Lydia. Lydia Martin. She was nice to me today."_

 _Dad's mouth twitches upward. Not quite a smile, but close. An almost-smile. "That's...good. I'm glad, son."_

 _Little Stiles hops up on a stool, rocking back and forth on two legs. "What do I do? Should I kiss her?"_

 _"Well..." his dad hesitates. "Not at first. You need to respect her. Right now, you like her, but you have to be sure she likes you, too."_

 _"How will I know?"_

 _"Oh, she'll let you know. It may take a while, and you might have to be patient, but you'll know. Trust me, you'll know."_

 _Will I, Dad?_

It had been almost ten years now. As Lydia crouched in front of him, murmuring soothing words of comfort and encouragement, he had no idea what she was feeling.

He knew what he was feeling—an intense hunger. Not to eat, but a hunger for violence. To rip, claw, maim.

Werewolves were wild creatures. They couldn't be domesticated.

What was Lydia thinking, staying here with him? Why was Scott out somewhere else, coaching Malia? How had Scott done this?

"Lydia, you need to get away from me," he gasped. "I can't hurt you."

"You can't hurt me?" she echoed, an incredulous shadow falling over her face. "Then should I just take these off?" She reached for the manacles that encircled his wrists, chaining him to the floor.

Adrenaline spiked through his veins, an extra shoot of pain into his already-wracked body. "No! Don't—Lydia, I _can't_ hurt you."

He breathed deep. Reached deep. "I can't hurt you...like...Scott couldn't hurt Allison."

She cocked an eyebrow. Her eyes, already huge and doe-like, grew even rounder. Listening, rapt.

"Y'know, he was terrified of it. Because he...he loves her."

Her fingers had frozen on his wrist. Her lips parted. She whispered. "They're not together anymore."

"But they were, okay? Their first date, that night at the party, that was his first..."

Stiles trailed off. He stared Lydia dead on. His eyes burned, itched, and he knew they were glowing.

Lydia finished his sentence. "His first change." Her voice was so soft, it might not have been audible if not for Stiles's fancy new wolf hearing.

He nodded. "On their first _date._ " He remembered spending the evening in a blur of panic. Thinking he might have to tell the new family in town that his best friend had killed their daughter.

As he said that, the spell seemed to break. Lydia blinked and narrowed her eyes. "Are you trying to insinuate that _this_ —" she indicated the dank basement, the chains clapped around his wrists— " _this_ is our first date?"

 _Oh crap._ "What? No! No, no, I—"

"Because _this_...is a really crappy date." A tiny, smug smirk crept over her face.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, fighting the chant in his mind kill kill kill and trying to get his thoughts in order. "Look, Lydia—"

"If you're going to say something, just say it."

Stiles hugged a humorless laugh. Like pretty much everything else in his life, this wasn't going to work out. "I was trying to say something epic."

"Then. Say. It."

The three words were so cold and demanding that any resistance he had left, any more posturing he'd been thinking of trying, was broken, smashed into nothing.

"I love you. I love you, Lydia, okay? I can't hurt you because...because I love you."

He stopped there, panting, sweating, as another wave of pain rippled up through his head. Hair ripped through the underdeveloped follicles on his face, giving him mutton chops that Elvis himself would be jealous of.

Well, that was great. It _would_ be best if he looked just _ridiculous_ while giving the speech of his life.

Lydia's expression was...more calculating than shocked. "Again with the 'you...can't hurt me.'"

She had to be messing with him. How could he explain this to someone so smart? "No, I...can, but I...can't."

That wasn't right. "I mean, I physically can hurt you, I have the ability to..."

 _Very cool and non-threatening, perfect._ "But I can't...mentally...begin to process how I could...what I would do..."

It just wasn't working. His tongue was in knots. _The wolf did it._ Wolf-tongue-tied. That was a thing, right?

He hung his head as Lydia spoke again.

"Something epic, huh?"

Stiles couldn't even manage to meet her eyes. "Yeah, well, sometimes things don't turn out the way you want."

Then he felt her hand on his jaw. His furry, misshapen jaw. Her fingers tilted his chin up, up, until he stared into her face.

A low growl rumbled in his throat as the wolf inside him begged, drooled, to be let out.

 _No._ This was Lydia, and her perfect lips were opening again, saying something.

"How about we just skip to the part...where I tell you to shut up?"

With her hand locking his jaw in place, she leaned in, pressing her lips against his.

Unafraid. Uncautious of the sharp teeth behind his lips, waiting to bite, to spill blood inside his mouth and hers—

No, wait. They were gone. His wolf teeth had retracted, and his very human mouth—with his very human breath, he was sure—was moving with Lydia's.

She tasted...good. Not in a yum-human-flesh-because-I'm-a-wolf way—but the way she tasted that day in the locker room. When she'd silenced his blaring mind without words, without anything but a shock. This kiss tasted even better than the last one.

He couldn't tell how long they stayed that way, lips moving in synchronization, both her hands cupping his furry face, no sound except their gasping breaths.

When they finally broke apart, Stiles couldn't do anything except stare at Lydia. Her perfect hair, only mussed the tiniest bit by their...makeout session? _Holy crap._ The thought froze Stiles's mind completely. He'd just made out with _Lydia Martin._

"You kissed me," he breathed in disbelief.

She nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I know. I was there."

"Why'd you do that?" he asked stupidly.

Lydia didn't reply right away. Her gaze dropped, lips curling inward in a shy smile. One hand went to tuck her hair behind her ear—a nervous tic of hers, he knew. With his new eyes, Stiles could tell, even in the dim light, she was _blushing._

He'd made Lydia Martin _blush._

"Lydia..." Stiles could feel a grin budding on his face. Not only had he done the thing he'd been waiting for since the third freaking grade, he could feel the wolfy hair on his cheeks retracting. His control was returning. And his confidence was blooming. _"If you have something to say..."_

Lydia wet her lips. She cast a timid glance up toward the basement window, where falling snow was just barely visible.

"Merry Christmas?" she tried.

Stiles snorted.

Whatever memory he'd been searching for was obsolete now. He had an anchor, and her name was Lydia Martin. The feeling of her lips against his, for no other reason than to _kiss_ him, bested any other thing he could remember.

This wolf thing was going to be a lot easier than he'd thought.

* * *

 **So I actually looked up the lunar cycle calendar for 2011, when this fic takes place, and there was a full moon on December 10th. Not quite Christmas, but I figured it was close enough!**

 **I had a blast doing Stydia Secret Santa for the first time! I'm on** **tumblr too, hop over and say hi!**


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